Strangers address secrets on postcards

STYLE & TRENDS - trend setting

"I married someone I didn't love," one woman writes on a postcard with a photograph of a lacy wedding gown, "because I wanted to wear the dress."

"I am a Southern Baptist pastor's wife," says a typewritten message cut in the shape of a cross. "No one knows that I do not believe in God."

The secrets started arriving two years ago, shortly after Frank Warren had an inspiration.

Searching for meaning in his own life, Warren, 41, who owns a small document-delivery business in suburban Maryland, printed 3,000 self-addressed postcards and handed them out to strangers at subway stops.

The instructions were simple. "Reveal anything -- as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before. Be brief. Be legible. Be creative."

About 30 postcards came back. And Warren assumed his little project was over.

He was wrong.

Word spread, and "people started making their own postcards," says Warren. "They started arriving from across the country, in German and French and Portuguese and Braille."

Five hundred postcards pour into his mailbox each week, most of them featuring elaborate illustrations. "I think of them now as graphic haikus," says Warren. "Sometimes it's the image that conveys more than the words."

The messages contain thoughts about suicide, unrequited love or just plain loneliness, among other things.

Warren posts a new batch of cards each week at postsecret .blogspot.com and recently published a book, PostSecret ($24.95, Regan Books), featuring some of his favorite postcards.

"I think the project raises a lot of important issues," says Warren. "Each of us carries a story, and each of us has an artist inside of us."